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Canton High begins 100th season with win over Lyman Memorial

Collinsville High School served students from Avon, Canton and Burlington. (Photo courtesy Canton Historical Society)

The Canton High boys basketball team tipped off the 2021-22 season on Saturday when they beat Lyman Memorial, 64-20.

The Warriors, led by head coach Craig Archambault, will be looking for their ninth straight winning season and a CIAC tournament berth for the ninth time in the last decade.

It’s the longest string of winning seasons in the program’s long history that dates back 100 years.

Yes. A 100 years. One century.

The 100th season of basketball at Canton High School got off to a successful start on Saturday with a 44-point win over Lyman Memorial from Lebanon. The Warriors received a balanced effort with five players scoring in double figures led by Brandon Powell with 13 points. Khalil Thomas scored 12 with Connor Madeau and Luke Maher scoring 11 points each. Madeau and Maher each had three 3-point shots.

Canton will try to build on that opening day success on Monday when they visit Cromwell for a 7 p.m. start.

In the 1920s, the school was called Collinsville High and it was a regional school with students from Canton, Burlington and Avon attending the school in what is now the parking lot next to Collinsville Congregational Church.

Games were played at Canton’s Town Hall on Market Street, according to files in the Farmington Valley Herald, the weekly newspaper that once chronicled life in the Farmington Valley from 1881 through 1996.

Collinsville High changed its name to Canton High in 1934 once they moved to the new high school on Dyer Avenue, now the Canton Intermediate School for grades 4-6.

Collinsville High’s basketball team struggled that first season (1920-21), losing all nine games they played. They had a season-high 15 points in a 52-15 loss to Windsor in March and suffered a pair of lopsided losses to Simsbury, 86-6 and 69-6.

The first victory for Collinsville High boys basketball program was 100 years ago this month – a 21-4 win over Bloomfield on Dec. 9. Five days later, Collinsville had their second consecutive win, a 24-22 win over Unionville High before taking two weeks off for the holidays with action resuming in early January.

A century later, information about those early years is difficult to find. First names were seldom used in newspapers at that time because each individual letter had to be typeset, making it a very time-consuming process to create a newspaper. So, words were at a minimum.

From results found in the Courant and Farmington Valley Herald, Collinsville finished 6-5 that 1921-22 season (year two) with victories over Unionville, Simsbury and Windsor. There was also a 52-26 win over Morse Business College from Hartford.

Canton didn’t field a basketball for two seasons during World War II in 1942-43 and in 1943-44. They’ve been playing ever since.

We’ll be sharing more stories about this history of Canton High basketball during this centennial campaign.

Canton 64, Lyman Memorial 20
At Canton
Lyman Memorial (20) Justin Thoutte 0-2-2, Bennett Murphy 1-1-3, Jordan Chandler 3-2-9, Owen Christenson 1-0-2, Romeo Millburg 1-0-2, Kevin Bottiello 1-0-2. Totals 7-5
Canton (64) Khalil Thomas 5-2-12, Brandon Powell 6-1-13, Matthew Benedetti 1-0-2, Isaiah Reece 5-2-12, Connor Madeau 4-0-11, Taylor Kim 1-0-2, Luke Maher 4-1-11, Jake Sidloski 3-0-6. Totals 27-4
Lyman Memorial (0-1)         6  5  4  5  — 20
Canton (1-0)                          17  19  26  11  — 64
Three-point shots: Chandler (L), Madeau (Ca) 3, Maher (Ca) 3

Gerry deSimas, Jr., is the editor and founder of The Collinsville Press. He is an award-winning writer and has been covering sports in Connecticut and New England for more than 40 years. He was inducted into the New England High School Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2018.

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